Can Democrats Force a Vote to End the Iran War?

[00:00:00] So, so far the war with Iran has been basically an unmitigated disaster for America. We've gotten insanely high gas prices here at home, we've torched a lot of relationships with friends and allies, and we've exposed the fickle nature of the American security guarantees that we've given to Gulf states. And oh, by the way, we've shown the whole world just how inept our defense industrial base has really become.

[00:00:19] But, you know, despite all that, we just have these midterm elections. Now the Democrats are going to be in Congress and they're going to have control of both chambers, both the House and the Senate, and that's going to let them step in and end this war with Iran and things are going to go back to normal, right? Not so much. Okay, so let's break down what this is because I'm getting this question a lot. You know, now that the Democrats are going to be in control of Congress, is America going to end the war with Iran?

[00:00:43] Well, it's not quite that simple. Let's get into it. One, you have this idea that America can end the war with Iran. There's another party with the war with Iran. Of course, that is the Iranians, and if they want to keep fighting, they can just keep fighting. But let's just assume that America decides to end the war and Iran goes along with it, and this is something that America can do. Okay, so Democrats are going to be in charge of Congress right now. Let's talk about what Congress can do to end the war with Iran.

[00:01:07] So there's a couple things Congress can do here, one of which is that they can vote to defund the war and just remove all the money that the administration needs to actually prosecute it. Of course, you know, bombs cost money, gas costs money, hazard paid for troops costs money. Congress can just end the funding for it, and the war would essentially grind to help the American side. We wouldn't be able to continue it anymore, and there is some precedent for this.

[00:01:29] The cleanest example is the Case-Church Amendment, which passed in 1973, which barred funding for U.S. combat operations in and over Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia after August 15th of that year, which ended our bombing campaign in Cambodia and eventually helped force the withdrawal of U.S. forces from the conflict. This was done again in the 1980s with the Boland Amendment, which restricted and then banned U.S. support for the Contras in Nicaragua.

[00:01:55] Of course, the Reagan administration tried to get around that, which then turned into the Iran-Contra scandal. A little irony there, considering that we're now in a war with Iran. Now, the problem with this, of course, is that if Congress does pass any sort of amendment limiting the war with Iran, the president can veto this. We saw this happen in 2007 when a Democratic Congress passed a war supplemental resolution that tied funding to a withdrawal timeline.

[00:02:21] Funding for the war in Iraq was tied to the administration following a withdrawal timeline. The Bush administration vetoed that, and considering the fact that even though Democrats are going to have a majority in the House and the Senate, they don't have a veto-proof majority, any funding bill that they try to pass that would limit the Trump administration's ability to continue the war could just be vetoed by the president.

[00:02:44] It'd be interesting if enough Republicans would sign on to it, given how unpopular the war is, to get it over a two-thirds majority. You know, Trump is not going to be on the ballot in 2028. If the MAGA brand is damaged enough and if Trump's control over the Republican Party is damaged enough by this horrible, horrible midterm result, you might see enough Republicans break ranks. But, you know, what happened to Thomas Massey is still front and center in a lot of folks' minds.

[00:03:11] And the safest thing for Congress to do, of course, as always, is absolutely nothing. And never, you know, doubt a politician's willingness to do nothing when it's safe and easy. If something might cost them, even remotely, anything. That's just the way it works. Now, the other option here is that the Congress can invoke the War Powers Resolution, commonly called the War Powers Act, which, of course, they passed in 1973. Again, as a partial response to the War of Vietnam, you know, there's this tension in the U.S. Constitution where Congress has to declare war.

[00:03:40] And you can kind of imply from that that the founding fathers envisioned that only Congress could get America involved in the war. The executive branch couldn't. But the executive branch, the president, is the commander-in-chief, so they have control over the military. And then there's this weird thing that happened in the post-World War II era where, for the first time, America maintained a large standing army capable of answering any sort of threat from the Soviet Union. And, you know, prior to that, we didn't have much of a military to go abroad, so this wasn't really much of an issue.

[00:04:10] The, you know, president could control the Navy and the Marine Corps. But other than patrolling the seas and keeping trade open, they couldn't really get us involved in long-term entanglements. But post-World War II, presidents now had a large standing army they could use. And so their argument for executive power is that they're the commander-in-chief of the military, and they're charged with defending the homeland. And so they can use the military as the commander-in-chief and order them into conflict as they deem fit as part of their, you know, constitutional mandate,

[00:04:37] in direct contradiction to the idea that only Congress can declare war and only Congress can fund the wars. So in response, Congress passes this War Powers Resolution trying to force the president that if the president does get into a conflict abroad, they immediately then need to go to Congress, tell them about it, and get the Congress's permission to continue the conflict. This is, of course, something that Trump has completely ignored with the war with Iran. You know, Pete Hegseth has that cute little line about,

[00:05:07] well, you know, you're supposed to come back and get authorization from Congress, you know, every 30 or 60 days. But, you know, we had a memorandum of understanding, so the war actually technically stopped, which reset the timer. So procedurally, we're not in violation of the law. And, of course, many presidential administrations challenge even if the law is valid. So if Congress were to try to enforce the War Powers Resolutions, one, they need to have the courage to do it. Good luck there. Two, it would then have to stand up to scrutiny in the courts.

[00:05:36] It's not sure how the courts would respond to deciding a case on whether or not the War Powers. Act is actually even constitutional. The executive branch would certainly argue that it infringes upon their constitutional authority. And given the current makeup of the Supreme Court, that'd be a rough one. But, you know, theoretically, Congress could do that. We've seen resolutions pass the House to that effect.

[00:06:02] Now, there is nothing in the War Powers Resolution that gives the president the ability to veto it. So as it's written, if both houses of Congress pass it, that should restrain the president and force the president to end any and all military operations that Congress hasn't approved. But here's the catch. In 1983, the Supreme Court declared that various kinds of legislative vetoes are unconstitutional in INS versus CHADA.

[00:06:33] Basically, the president has the power to veto legislation passed by Congress, and Congress can't write legislation that just says that there's no veto power. So even though the way that resolution is written doesn't give the president the ability to veto a resolution passed by Congress under the War Powers Resolution, the Supreme Court already decided that the president can veto legislation that Congress passes. So we need to veto proof majority to pass the War Powers Resolution to force the president to end the war.

[00:07:02] And then even then, it would have to go to the courts who would have to decide whether or not the resolution itself is constitutional. And the only clear constitutional path for Congress to step in to end the war with Iran is to pull all of the funding for it. Yikes. If that already seems complicated, let's look at this from then, too, just to show you how difficult this is going to be. Right. Let's think about the people who get elected to Congress. They're elected to Congress by local constituents, people in their states, their communities.

[00:07:29] They're elected mostly on local issues. Congress very rarely gets involved in foreign policy and national security. It's very rarely the top issue of the day. Even right now, based on pulling from the midterms, you know, the Iran war is definitely a huge negative. But the two main things that people were mad about were, you know, corruption in the Trump administration and high gas prices. I think there was like a one point difference in exit point between those two things. Like those are the main issues. Now, high gas prices downwind of war with Iran.

[00:07:55] But the war itself was not the main driver of people going to the pools. It wasn't the main driver of people who voted for Trump two years ago now voting for Democrats and flipping seats. It's, you know, high gas prices and high cost of living and perceived corruption in the Trump administration. I say perceived so people don't see me, but hey, is what it is.

[00:08:17] That means that the folks that are going to Congress right now, this new batch of senators and congresspersons, aren't necessarily going to have the war with Iran as their top issue. Now, let's also think about this war with Iran. Iran's been a boogeyman in American politics for a very, very long time. Generations of American politicians have wanted to go to war with Iran. This is not a unique Trump thing. This is not a uniquely Republican thing.

[00:08:43] There's been a very motivated, small but motivated group of politicians of both sides of the aisle that have wanted to start a war with Iran, including very, very powerful senators like Senator Chuck Schumer, who might be the new majority leader. And we can talk about why they wanted to go to war with Iran. There's various reasons. Some of it's because they actually vilify Iran. Some of it actually genuinely think there's a national security interest here. Other folks just because Iran's a rival of Israel. They want to support Israel.

[00:09:13] Pick a reason, any reason. The point is that the majority of folks in Congress don't feel strongly one way or another because that's just not what primarily motivates people that go to Congress. It's going to be local concerns for their constituents, not foreign policy concerns. It happens to be linked right now, but not a direct linkage for what they care about. And then there is a small minority in both parties that wants us to be in a war with Iran. And yeah, they're probably not happy with the Trump administration went about doing it.

[00:09:41] But now that they're here, they certainly don't want it to end. So if you look at people who are against the war with Iran, you're going to be looking at these, this new crop of congresspersons and senators who are just gotten elected. Now, these are freshman legislatures. They don't have friends in D.C. They're brand new to the game. And they're in the minority as far as how many people want to actually take steps to end the war with Iran. Now, the easiest thing for Congress to do, of course, is always nothing.

[00:10:10] And we just talked through the two techniques, defunding or war powers resolution that they could use to get the executive to stop this war with Iran. Both of which are hard. Both of which is going to be very hard to get a veto-proof majority behind pursuing. Now, let's go back to 2003, the Iraq war. Because a lot of this, for folks who have been in office for a long time, goes all the way back to 2003. These people have very, very long memories. What happens in 2003?

[00:10:40] Bush administration wants to evade Iraq. They go to Congress and, you know, they don't really say, like, we need you to vote on this. But we're like, we sure would like you to vote to approve this war, this new war with Iraq. Look, here's our reasons, national security, weapons of mass destruction, all the stuff the Trump administration is currently saying about Iran. It's like the hits from 2003. It's the same type of justifications that we heard back then. So in 2003, Congress votes to approve the invasion of Iraq.

[00:11:09] Hillary Clinton is then running for president in 2008 against Barack Obama. That war was so unpopular because it was going so terribly. But it actually became a major issue in the campaign, the Democratic primaries. And the fact that Hillary Clinton voted to approve the war with Iraq became a problem for, given how unpopular and disastrous that war was at the time. So there was a lesson here drawn from Congress.

[00:11:35] Even though Congress, you know, has this responsibility to provide oversight to the executive and to fund wars and declare when the United States actually commits blood and treasure to a war. However, that's their constitutional application. It's not politically convenient to take votes on it because that puts people on the record and the record can be used against them later. Yikes. Now, and this is kind of an interesting flaw in the system that the founders set up. And it's not really a critique of them. It's just this is a wicked problem.

[00:12:02] You know, the founders created three separate and equal branches of government. And they assumed that each branch would jealously guard its power. You know, Congress would never cede power to the executive. Like they would be too narcissistic, too egotistical, too high in their own supply, too self-centered and involved with themselves to ever cede power to the executive. Well, 2003 is a case studying exactly why they've chosen to do that in the foreign policy and national security realm. One, it's not top of mind for the constituents.

[00:12:31] So it's not like there's a huge amount of pressure on them to be directly involved in this stuff. And the fact that we've been all voluntary military force means other than things other than things like high gas prices, the majority of the American public is not really exposed to any of the consequences of our military operations abroad. It's just a political reality. It's one of the reasons why the global war on terror went on for so long. So they don't have a direct motivation from their constituents in most cases to be involved.

[00:12:57] And if they do get involved, it can hurt them politically later amongst their own party voters if they have other political aspirations to move up in the world. And they have to have a competitive primary process or even, you know, an eventual runoff or race against someone from the opposing party. So, yes, everything that the founding fathers assumed about the types of people that would seek political power was absolutely true.

[00:13:23] They are almost without exception, you know, completely full of themselves, egotistical, narcissistic, all those things, all those things. Most high performing ambitious people are at some level. But it became more politically expedient for them to cede power and authority to the executive branch to avoid accountability and protect their own political prospects than it is to step in and get involved.

[00:13:46] So for the Democrats taking control of the House and Senate to actually lead to an end with the war with Iran, one, Trump could just get bored with it and laze off into the distance and carry out something else. He seems like he's getting old and tired and that might actually happen, as crazy as it sounds. But they would actually need to develop a veto proof majority to pursue one of two courses of action. One is either ending the funding for the war.

[00:14:13] The other one is to invoke the War Powers Resolution. And then they'd have to be willing to stick together through a fight with the executive branch, potentially the judicial branch as well, to see that all the way through. This is already a very long and timely process, as you can imagine. They're not even going to be in office until January to do this stuff.

[00:14:34] So they get through all that, and then you need enough of them to be willing to be on the record about why they should step in and stop this now on the consequences of that. And then here's the other thing. The war with Iran's been very politically unpopular in America. And with that, Democrats who are eyeing the race in 2028, trying to beat whoever steps in to try to replace Trump, whether it's J.D. Vance, Marco Rubio, you know, we'll see who steps up to the plate.

[00:15:03] Ron DeSantis, you know, if you're trying to win the White House in 2028, is it more politically to your advantage to have the war with Iran continue so you can continue to use that as a political bludgeon against the Republicans as you get ready for your presidential run in 2028? Now, you don't need the majority of political folks to be that cynical and calculated about it.

[00:15:31] You just need a small minority of powerful influence brokers to see it that way, to step in and gum up the system. Because, of course, the easiest thing for Congress to do is always nothing. Anyway, so we'll see if the Democrats can pull this off and actually do something to end the war with Iran, how it plays out. I just put this all out here so you understand, like, it is far from certain.

[00:15:56] And just because this Wednesday turned out, you know, the way it did when we all woke up, doesn't mean that meaningfully changes the way the world looks in geopolitics. Anyway, let's see what happens. Good luck to y'all out there. And we'll check in next week. Take care.